Category: compositional analysis

The Song Doesn’t Need to Continually Build to an End Climax

A lot of songs produced nowadays reach a climax close to the end of the song, then fall off and end pretty much like it started (see my previous posting for “We Are Young” for an example). “Titanium” doesn’t do that.

This song works, and is different, because the song continually builds and falls, from verse to chorus and back.

True, the final pre-chorus/chorus part is even MORE climactic than the others, but the song hits like a Mack truck at 1:16. This effect is emphasized by the keyed compression on the synth track, giving the synthesizer a pulsating rhythm opposite of the kick. This climax happens again at 2:32 and 3:33. There’s no need to continually build throughout the song here, the rising and falling of the track provide an enormous amount of movement for the song.

Give the Song a Break and Give the Song Somewhere to Climax To

Related to the previous concept, you have to come down from the climax of the song at some point. If that climax comes early in the song (as it does here), you have to do something to give the listener’s ears a break. At 1:32, the song returns to the same “level” as it was in verse one. It just falls off, and you’re right back into another verse. It happens again at 2:48, but this time leads right into the bridge. The next fall off, at 3:49, is a hard stop that fades into reverb.

This tune would not work if the intensity level had remained continuous after it reached the first climax at 1:16. The listener needs a break! That much intensity for that long would provide no contrasting dynamics, and the result is that the song would sound “flat” for the rest of the tune.

Similarly, don’t feel the need to go for the knockout punch in the first thirty seconds of the song either. This song doesn’t reach any real climax until 1:16, but that also means that it spends from 0:46 to 1:16 building up to that climax. That’s thirty seconds of build. That’s a long time, in popular music terms, spent leading the listener to that climax. It’s not an automatic increase from the verse, it’s a process of increasing the intensity from low to high.

There’s No Need to Have Continuous Percussion

To help build the climax, Guetta relies on the judicious use of percussion instrumentation in “Titanium”. He doesn’t feel the need to continually use any single piece of percussion, and sometimes drops the percussion altogether (0:46 to 1:01, for example) to help create different levels of intensity and emotion. Same at 2:02 and 2:47. I dare say this song is percusisonless for maybe 25% of the song, and very little percussion for maybe 33% of the tune.

Do NOT feel like you always must have a percussion element keeping the beat in the song.

It’s simply not true, and removing elements of the percussion aids in creating different levels of dynamics and raising or lowering them by adding or subtracting them.

Katy Perry’s single “Wide Awake” shows what it’s like when someone wake up from a dream and realizes that their worst nightmares have come true. In this case, the dream-like state was, as history is doomed to repeat, a bad relationship (ostensibly with Russell Brand in this regard).

Use of Melody

What makes this song interesting, from a production and songwriting standpoint, is there is only a single chord progression used throughout the entire song. The typical use of chord structure and differing progressions to differentiate the verses from the choruses and choruses from the bridge do not exist here. Instead, melody and instrumentation are used to break the song up into different sections. Want an exercise to become a better songwriter? Take a basic chord progression and create as many different melodies as you can with that single progression. “Wide Awake” shows us that melody and lyrical content are extremely important, and creative use of each is necessary to successful music production.

Chord Progression

As for the chord progression, the song is in the key of G minor. Kind of. Home base for the song is G minor, at least. The chord progression is Gm – B♭ – F – C, or i – III – VII – IV. The triads that originally appear in G natural minor are i – ii° – III – iv – v – VI – VII. All this jibes except for the IV chord in the progression. According to our naturally-occurring triads, that C chord is supposed to be a minor chord, but is, in fact, a major chord!

The Katy Perry – Mozart Connection

Now, we all know that minor keys are representative of sadness, loneliness, demure feelings, etc. G minor has an especially-revered position as being considered by Mozart, the best key signature for expressing sadness. In fact, many of Mozart’s minor key works were written in the key of G minor (including symphonies number 25 & 40, two of his most famous symphonies).

Turning a Minor Chord into a Major Chord

So, what happens when you change out the C minor chord that’s originally in the list of G minor triads for a C major triad? You turn the G minor key into a mode!

Let’s take a closer look. The out-of-place chord is the IV, or C major in this case. The original key of G minor has the C as minor, or a iv chord. C minor is comprised of C – E♭– G. The C major chord used is C – E– G. So, the next step is to see what happens when you replace an E♭with an E♮. The new key consists of the notes G – A – B♭– C – D – E – F, or G Dorian mode.

Dorian Mode

Dorian mode has a long history of melancholy and sadness. Take a listen to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and The Bealtes’ “Elanor Rigby” for a primer.

Also note that the E♮ that appears in the scale only appears in that singe IV chord too. Otherwise they’d have to change the other chords around, which probably wouldn’t make much musical sense.

Other Tunes With the Same Progression

This chord progression for “Wide Awake” is used in several other extremely famous melancholy and glum tunes.

In this series, we take the world’s most popular songs, hit by hit, and deconstruct them, bit by bit, to learn what makes them popular, memorable, and interesting. We look at the compositional techniques used in the song, such as chord progressions, tempo, and meter, as well as the instrumentation used to make this song a hit. We also discuss what makes the song such a memorable “earworm”.

“Payphone” employs many production devices that seek to grab the listener’s attention and keep it there in order to tell the story. Let’s take a look at some of them and see what we can learn from Payphone by Maroon 5 featuring Wiz Khalifa:

Begin With the Vocals

From the very first second (literally 0:00 on the YouTube counter), notice that the song begins with just the vocals, no instrumentation. People have a natural tendency to listen to other peoples’ voices. Think about it from a evolutionary standpoint. Our ancestors that were predisposed to paying attention to what other cave people had to say were the ones that learned that there was a sabre-tooth-tiger around the corner and didn’t get eaten. You and I are naturally wired to listen to the human voice above all else, and, when that’s the only thing going on, your attention is focused on the message being conveyed.

Additionally, the song begins with the chorus. Those of us whom have taken popular music songwriting courses in college have been told to get to the chorus ASAP. Well, they do it here. Those are the words the songwriter wants people to remember, so once the listener’s attention is grabbed, make the most of it and give them the single thing you want them to remember.

Songwriting Tip

Speaking of the chorus, and why it’s so memorable, people also focus on personalization. Words like “I”, “you”, “us”, “me”, “your” get people involved in the story. Want a crash course in using this technique effectively? Listen to most anything the Beatles ever did, especially their earlier albums. A quick perusal over my iTunes gives me “I’ll Follow the Sun”, “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You”, ”Tell Me What You See”, and “P.S. I Love You”. People want to hear stories they can put themselves in, and making songs personal keeps peoples’ attention.

The introductory chorus includes very simple instrumentation, just enough to give the listener a feel for where the song is going, chord-wise. Just in case the listener’s stopped paying attention by the end of that first chorus, they grab your attention AGAIN by including a moment of complete silence around 0:18. Silent (along with vocals-only) sections are a wonderful way to break up parts of a song and capture attention, and are included in lots of popular music songs. People notice change, and changing from sound to no sound forces attention back to the song at hand.

The first verse is also not very climactic, taking out the bass added at the end of the intro chorus and bringing in an almost marching-band snare and kick drum. Not complicated, just a very sharp snare and punchy kick.

Using Background Vocals

The drama is turned up a notch in the pre-chorus by adding background vocals (0:33, starting with “all of our bridges burned down”). Again, parts of songs that are repeated are the most important ones, and this pre-chorus is part of what needs to be remembers and sung along to. The sound of multiple people singing triggers the listener’s own desire to sing along.

There’s another vocal-only section at 0:52, and now the listener has the aural cue to pay attention when they only hear the vocals with no instrumentation. Back to the chorus/hook/song title. They knew they had to make is count here, so they bring in the whole band and multiple vocal tracks. The percussion that’s awash in reverb on the 4 of each measure introduces gives the listener the cue to where the downbeat of one is.

The chorus ends at 1:28 and is cued by that special-effect sucking sound, whatever that’s officially called, which is also used in this song to tell the listener there’s a change happening in the song. There’s no turn around, no time for the listener to stop paying attention after the chorus and forget about the song, but they launch right in to verse two. The song doesn’t go back to the level it was at in the first verse, but adds the bass and acoustic guitar to what we had in the first verse.

The second pre-chorus adds some vocal ornamentation in the background vocals (1:52 and 2:10, for examples). This gives the listener a cue that this is a different and more expanded chorus than what they’ve had before. It also keeps interest and lets the people singing along have fun with the ornamentation as well (as they try to mimic what they hear). Also seeks to turn up the drama another notch, on our way to the climax).

Changing Up the Bridge

The Wiz Khalifa verse at 2:38 acts as a bridge for the song, providing a break in the song that’s different than the verses and choruses. This song also treats this section by changing the entire texture of the instrumentation, opting for an 808-style kick, snaps instead of a snare, and a woppy synth instead of piano.

The climax hits around 3:13, once again with no break in between song sections, and being introduced by a two-measure lay-out of the drums.

The end of the song is abrupt, which I’m sure radio DJs don’t care for, but works well for the song because the last line of the entire song is the first line of the chorus (“I’m at a payphone”), which also happened to be the name of the song. Genius use of music production techniques!

“Somebody That I Used to Know” is written in the key of D minor. I believe this particular key is used for several reasons:

D minor’s relative major

D minor is related to F major. F major is a fairly easy key for peoples’ ears to understand, with only one flat (B-flat) and its relationship to C major (being the V chord in F major) and closeness in the circle of fifths. C major is the home base for major keys, with no sharp or flat notes (all white keys on a keyboard). The idea here is accessibility for the listener. This is not absolute accessibility, however. Think o fit as taking a familiar painting, and changing the color scheme to give it a darker tone or mood. The familiarity of F major brings about positive, happy vibes, but they’re warped into a minor key, and the clouds roll in.

Use in the chord progression

The use of D minor also plays an important role in the chord progression. Most of the song is a simple i – VII progression. If i is D minor, then VII is C major. C major, the previously-noted home base for music-listeners’ ears!The you-play-this-chord-and-everything’s-okay chord!

This sets up a severe dichotomy. D minor, sad. C major, happy. Back & forth, back & forth. The fact that the tempo is close to 120 BPM (129, I believe), makes it feel like a clock, ticking away the seconds until your life is over because your girlfriend dumped you last week.

With C major as such a starting point for your music ear, to make C major the place you to from D minor, is unsettling, at best. Oh, the misery!

The chorus is not much more complicated, i – VII – VI – VII. Wanna hear some other songs that employ a i – VII – VI – VII progression?

Something we always talk about in my production classes is where the climax of the song is, how we get to the climax, and what happens after the climax. Some songs hit you like a Mack truck from beat one. “We Are Young” does not. One of the things that are so great about this song is the buildup. The song starts out with – say what?? – toms playing the same single-bar pattern over & over?? Imagine a scale from one to ten, with one being the least climactic thing you could do in a song and 10 being over-the-top meters-in-the-red guitars-to-eleven in-your-face production. The beginning of “We Are Young” starts at what, 1.5, maybe?

The introduction of the vocals is followed by the most simplistic piano performance possible – two-measure chords. The song builds with a more complicated drum pattern by using the snare and more piano.

The interesting thing with the piano is that, while the drums are playing a VERY straight 4|4 time, the piano is playing triplet patterns. These are all things that a first-year music student can do the middle of their first year playing, but there’s already a tension being set up in the music, between the eighth-note percussion and triplet piano. All that tension’s got to go somewhere…

Almost a minute into the song, and all we hear is drums, piano, and vocals. And to make it worse, the pre-chorus is in a much slower tempo. This is about the time people go mad wanting SOMETHING to HAPPEN!!!

Well, at 0:48 in the track, it does. The chorus relieves all the previously built-up tension in a wonderful way. It’s almost the song actually STARTS at the chorus. Drums, bass, piano and a whole bunch of vocals, but we’re not at the climax yet.

All instrumentation follows a strict eighth-note feel from here on out. And if you haven’t consciously heard the snare drum, your subconscious sure has. The snare drum drives the song from here until the outro. The snare drum is HUGE. Monstorous.

This is a production technique that serves the purpose of making the song something you can lock on to and keep the beat with. Your subconscious picks up on this and you find yourself waving your arms in the air like you’re the love child of Travis Barker & John Bonham. The snare plays such a large part of the song from here on out, the end of the snare sound contributes to the rhythm too. The snare is way more than just a snare for the remainder of the song.

Even more interestingly, the snare (as a percussion instrument) is in almost complete contrast to the bass synth in the chorus. The snare is hard, with sharp edges, the bass is soft & fuzzy. Contrast builds a song.

The many vocals in the chorus also contrast to the first verse. Another subconscious element of this song is that when one person sings, you listen. When many people sing, you sing along too. The vocals in the last line of the chorus “than the sun” from 1:25 to about 1:30 beg the listener to scream along with them. And they do. Background vocals tell listeners what to sing along with, and people remember what they sing along with.
However, we’re not finished yet. Through the second verse and chorus, we’re still reaching the climax of the entire song. The climax of the song happens at 2:32, when Janelle Monáe’s vocal comes in. Not only is the listener singing along with the chorus (and screaming out the last line like it’s their lifeline), but the bridge invited the listener participation with an entire chorus of “na na na na” vocals to sing along with! You can even go falsetto and sing in the same register the children that make up this chorus sing.

The climax happens at the middle of the song, and then proceeds to decline back to the original intensity.

The song ends very similar to how it starts, with a simple piano and vocal.

In this series, we take the world’s most popular songs, hit by hit, and deconstruct them, bit by bit, to learn what makes them popular, memorable, and interesting. We look at the compositional techniques used in the song, such as chord progressions, tempo, and meter, as well as the instrumentation used to make this song a hit. We also discuss what makes the song such a memorable “earworm”.

This song is the result of a meeting between the lead singer for fun., Nathaniel Ruess, and the eventual producer of the track, Jeff Bhasker. Before this, fun. had released one previous album titles Aim & Ignite, on the Nettwerk Label. None of the previous singles released had made it onto the major charts, but the album climed as high as 71 on the Billboard charts. The single released before “We Are Young” was a single entitled “C’Mon”, as a joint single with Panic! At the Disco, whom they toured with in 2011.

Jeff Bhasker had been known for producing and writing hip-hip and R&B records, working with the likes of Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Kid Cudi, and Beyonce.

Chord Progressions:

The entire song is in the key of F major, with no deviations, which is part of the reason why this song is so accessible. F major resides right next to C Major in the circle of fifths, so, with C being the 5th (dominant, V chord) in the key of F, using that “home base” of a C major chord in relation to the key of the song adds a lot of familiarity and stability.

Verses:

F – Dm – Gm – Bb – C
I – vi – ii – IV – V

Look familiar? Unless you’re in a doo-wop group, this progression may not seem like anything special. If you ARE in a doo-wop group, you’ll recognize that this is a variation on a classic chord progression, sometimes called the 50s Progression, the Ice Cream Changes, of the Stand By Me Changes. The 50s Progression removes the ii chord, to make it I – vi – IV – V, and is the bases for many popular music hits of the 50s & 60s, from Gene Chandler’s “Duke of Earl” to Dion & the Belmonts “Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love?” to more modern-day hits such as Justin Bieber’s “Baby”.

The addition of the Gm (ii) chord is placed there to prolong the subdued feel of the verses, which coincides with the lyrical content.

Chorus:

F – Dm – Gm – F – C
I – vi – ii – I – V

As a slight modification of the I – vi – ii- IV – V progression used in the verses, this chord progression also brings about memories of songs that make “We Are Young” such a easy song to remember. The chord progression I – vi – ii – V was a very common chord progression used in songs during the 1930s and 1940s. Remember that one song that everybody played on the piano at school/camp/church/wherever, “Heart & Soul”? Yeah, that earworm is nothing but I – vi – ii- V over and over and over again. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “I Got Rhythm” also fit the bill.

The use of these common chord progressions add up to make “We Are Young” almost seem like a song we already know. We’ve heard these chord changes a million times, so it’s very easy to wrap our head around the structure of the song.